Happy Holidays

Wishing you a safe a wonderful holiday break.  Use this time to relax, rejoice, celebrate and completely take a break from school/work.  See you in 2014!

(Another) Holiday Assistance Idea for Students

Yes, the holidays are certainly in full swing and I like many of you are in charge of some sort of holiday assistance program at my school.  I've shared with you in a post about how I plan and implement at holiday assistance program at my school.  But surprise, I have another idea for holiday assistance to share....

This year our student support team thought of another way to help students that may need assistance...by giving them a school shirt.  So that's exactly what we're doing.  Just think about it, when you first started working at your school, when you received your school shirt you felt a sense of "being official" and belonging so why wouldn't our students that don't have a school shirt feel this same exact way?

Here are a few of my school shirts.  They make me feel "official". 

From that thought we decided to collect gently used school t-shirts or give parents the option to donate money to purchase new school shirts (each shirt is $10).  I am not sure of the dynamics of your school, but as I'll say again, I am extremely fortunate to work in a school where we have lots of support from parents.  Most parents have donated money to purchase new shirts.  I've given out some of the shirts and the excitement and smiles are absolutely amazing!  We have had a lot of support as well as positive feedback on this project and would like to continue this throughout the year for new students that may transfer in mid-year and may not be able to purchase a school shirt.  Something so small to us as a school t-shirt can really make a huge impression on a child. 

We Went to College & So Can YOU Display

This year at my school, we have a bulletin board dedicated to fun facts about our school staff family.  The bulletin board is changed every 2 months and we have a "theme" each time around.  This time it was my turn, so I suggested a college themed board.  Here's what I did:

-I cut out the words "We Went to College & So Can YOU!" using my Cameo Silhouette Paper cutter  (at the suggestion of blogger bestie Danielle from The School Counselor Blog I got a grant from my school's PTA to get one, they are absolutely awesome for creating printables).  I used the font Simplicity for this cut out.  I glued the letters onto paper for backing for the bulletin board. 

Letters made using Cameo Silhouette

-Each staff member emailed a picture of themselves in either their college t-shirt, hat, holding a sign, or anything that represented the college/university that they attended.  I also offered to take a picture of staff members in their shirts for the bulletin board (which worked out great). 

-To enhance the pictures and add the staff's name and university, I used the photo editing site Picmonkey.  I used the font "Freshman" and added a border of the school's colors for each picture (for the schools I didn't know their colors, I used Google to find out).

Here's me, I actually took this pic on the campus of my university,  I was super excited to go back to campus!

The cool thing is that our staff had some very creative pictures representing their university...

I LOVE this pic!

Here's the finished product.

What a great way to showcase your "college & career" standards...school wide.